How to Reach Your True Inner Power | with Pedro Jerez

Michael: Hey, what is up brothers? Hope that you're doing well. I'm excited for another episode with. My guy, Pedro Jerez, amazing entrepreneur, business owner, world traveler a man that I met in just a most random circumstance who happens to share my birthday, who's wild…

Pedro: First time ever, by the way.

Michael: Yeah, same for me. Also a very interesting October 7^th, who's also traveled very worldly human being and has a, an energy that if you were sitting across from him it's palatable in this way that you feel his masculine strength, which probably, I don't know where it comes from, but we're going to find out. Pedro, thanks for coming and being part of the unbroken men podcast, brother.

Pedro: Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. I'm excited.

Michael: Yeah, no, I appreciate you. I want to start off with this. Take me back. You grew up in the Bronx. Grew up in New York city, parents from the DR, Dominican Republic. What was childhood like for you?

Pedro: Yeah my idea of fun growing up was I grew up, me and my three sisters we had three twin beds and, I don't know, we lived on 182nd Street in the Bronx across the street from the Bronx Zoo and we had three twin beds that were shaped in like a “U” and my idea of fun was like jumping from twin bed to twin bed. That kind of gives you a feel for like how close they were and the circumstances that we grew up with. But I had two loving parents that I'm incredibly grateful for that put family first. I think that's a big part in my culture. I think my story really kicks off with understanding my dad, though. My dad was a guy who, growing up, was somebody who valued more having a gold chain or buying the next gold chain and having tank tops and different things that, he needed to feel cool. He valued that more than making progress in his life to help better his family's life. And it wasn't, he was a cab driver when they migrated, my mom and my dad, from Dominican Republic to New York City in the Bronx. And it wasn't until one day after being a cab driver for several years that he was dropping a passenger off. And instead of paying his bill, the guy, what he did was he literally pulled out a gun and he pointed at my dad and he said, give me all your money. And my dad had never been on the receiving side of an experience like that, and that experience shook him. And because that experience shook him, it opened his mind to different opportunities. And I think that's where my story starts. Because I think if you want to understand me, you need to understand my dad.

Michael: What's fascinating about that is, life can be over in the blink of an eye. And I can't imagine what must have went through his head in that moment, right? Wife, children, you, right? What changed? When he came home, you said, to understand me, you have to understand him. What was different?

Pedro: I was just a newborn at the time, but knowing my mom, I know that my mom was encouraging him to be better because they had a family. And I think that for the first time he was able to, because of outside circumstances, he was able to integrate what had been, what he was trying to what, what was, life was inviting him to do for some time. That would be a good way to put it. And because of this scary situation, as so much happens in life, we have to have some sort of traumatic event. I wish it wasn't that way. I know it's definitely not been my story. God bless you if that's been your story. It just has not been my reality. But because of that's what changed, and then as life brought gifts, which in his particular case was a friend of his from Dominican Republic found this network marketing opportunity of all things, and brought it to him. He doesn't speak a lick of English to this day. And so that was an interesting opportunity of how he can better his life, there was a roadmap. And I think that had that not happened, he would have never said yes to that. And especially when they were encouraging him to do things like read books and listen to audio cassette tapes about personal development and stuff like that. I'll just say this other thing, what changed was that what he was giving his attention to radically shifted where it wasn't like hanging out with the same people. Now it was listening to audio books, listening to cassette tapes, and we had this little yellow car, we call it the bumblebee. And we had no idea if this thing was going to turn on. The thing was so old and so rusty, I kid you not, that if you open the door, it made this sound like, like that kind of sound. And then when you got in, hopefully it turned on. And if it turned on, there's one thing my dad was a religious about, which was putting those damn person development concept tapes inside, and I was a young boy at the time three years old, if that, and I would immediately switch it to the radio, ‘cause I didn't want to listen to it. And I'll never forget what my dad said, and he would hold this standard and this belief and this boundary, which was when it's your car, you have to decide what we listen to, that was his commitment. And that would have never been there if this event didn't happen in his life, in my opinion.

Michael: Yeah. It makes me oddly think about when I'm driving and don't touch my radio, just don't, I'm driving, you want to drive? Listen what you want to listen to and I'm very adamant and the podcast and the personal development road trip music, if you will. Yeah that's fascinating. And you look at those moments in life and we're all faced with a decision to make about who it is we choose to be as men. Because that day, that same experience happened to another man in a very similar situation, especially in a city the size of New York, that's not uncommon. You know this, I know this, and then you're faced with, what are you going to do about it? And then you have this moment where you're opening the creaky yellow door and playing the cassette tape and what I think is really interesting about you is, I know that you have this love for personal development and Tony Robbins. And it's that came from somewhere when I was growing up as a boy, cause I, I didn't have that right. Very opposite. No father, super abusive stepdad, drug addict mother. I moved towards men who were like Jay Z at a very young age and men that I saw in movies and the way that they navigated the world. And so my obsession wasn't about doing anything of value, but more of chasing money and women. And I think that there is a plus side to indoctrination, right? And I think that you might be a byproduct of that. What happens to a three year old who's listening to personal development?

Pedro: Yeah. Not only that, what happens to a three year old when the male figure in your life decides to be a good role model in a particular area of life. Because just because somebody is a good role model in one area of life doesn't mean that they're a good role model in another. And so my dad was not a good husband, my dad was somebody who went on this entrepreneurship journey and came out the other side, incredibly successful, and does speak a lick of English. And I think from that perspective he was my Hero, he was the guy who catapulted me and helped me dream, I was already different. I was already weird, I was already thought like this. But he showed me it was possible. If somebody who doesn't speak a lick of English can move his family from the Dominican Republic to the Bronx and start off as a cab driver and create something incredible financially for himself. What excuse do I have? I just felt like I was given a significant advantage over him, in many ways.

Michael: Why?

Pedro: I didn't start, I had this, I was born in the US, let's just say that, okay. I was born in the United States. I had access to education. That's not something he really did. You have to understand, like, where my family came from, where my dad came from you would walk to school barefoot. If you wanted to take a woman out on a date, you had to negotiate with your five brothers on who gets to use the shoes, the pair of shoes that they have so that they can make a good impression on the woman that they're inviting out. That's the circumstances that my dad grew up with, and at least I never had to think about food. I always had shoes on my feet. I wasn't well off, but like I never had to worry about my basic necessities, my basic human needs that was taken care of for me, and for a human like me, though, there were a lot of moments where I really felt I struggled internally with my own self worth, my own beliefs, my own whatever that's all I need. Even to this day, that's all I need, just show me it's possible. And I'm in the game put me in the game coach.

Michael: I resonate with that like you wouldn't believe there was, I grew up in the streets, right? I grew up having to do what I had to do to survive breaking into houses, stealing cars, got kicked out of high school, got caught selling drugs. The whole adolescence thing was insane. But what happened is I just kept looking at the guys, unfortunately, because it was, Jay Z and movies like heat and like this mops dude, we, I must've watched Scarface a thousand times as a child. You know what I mean? Between Scarface and Rocky, those were my two favorite movies, right? On this one hand, I have this hero's journey. And on the other hand, you have the demise of manhood. And it was like, I just, I felt like I could do it, and then I just, I started losing friends and I started getting in more and more trouble, and then one day there was a shift where I was like, wait a second. What if I could do this legally? And my whole life changed forever, right? Not necessarily in the positive way. Cause like a downside to chasing without clarity is that you end up wherever you end up. And so that put me in poor relationships. At one point I was 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep. I was the antithesis of what a man could potentially be, right? Because the, I just wasn't zeroed in. I wasn't focused. What you mentioned something that I want to go back to and I think is really powerful. You were like, my dad was a role model here, but maybe not here in the spaces that he was. How has that impacted you as a man?

Pedro: Yeah, I think how it's impacted me is that he showed me that anything you put your mind to that you can do, like truly so my dad ends up joining this network marketing company, his habits start to change. In the sense, at least, what he's inputting into his mind. And, he started putting his family in a position to succeed and I've always I really value that. What am I doing to put the people, to put myself and the people around me in a position to succeed. And I remember this moment very specifically. I was five years old. And, we're in Vegas right now. And He flew me and my sisters, my mom, down to Las Vegas. It was the company convention, annual company convention, happened at the MGM Grand, and I'm holding my dad's hands, and there's these lights and kind of a lot of people in a particular area. So he guides me in that direction, being the adult. And when we get there, what we find is the grand prize at the casino was advertising, and so it was a million dollars in cash. In 10,000 stacks and in 20 bills, I've never seen that level of money in my life. Not where I come from, and I remember in that moment, I can feel my dad's hand like squeezing my hand just a little bit stronger. And I squeeze his hand back because for whatever reason, I don't know why, but like I'm feeling excitement that he's feeling excited. And I remember looking at my dad and like just seeing the excitement that we shared in that moment. And I kid you not, had I not had that experience, my life would be very different because in that moment, I look at my dad at five years old and I say, I'm going to be a millionaire at five. And when we made it back home to New York City in the Bronx, I remember this is all I can say. I was overly excited. I would tell everybody, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my friends at school, everybody even the guy who used to bully me. I was one day I'm going to, what I would, I just made a story about it. And that's how I justified being bullied. And my mom used to hear me say this to everybody. Of course, I'm around my mom and she would say in Spanish, which basically means shut your effing mouth. And what she would go on. You can say fuck on this podcast. Okay, cool, cool, she would say. Shut your fucking mouth and the reason why she would say that is because she said god forbid somebody actually thinks that we have money But had I not had that experience had my dad His life's journey had not guided him to that particular casino in that moment. I would have never had that experience and that experience drove my life in a really powerful way, but also in a way that took me a lot of time to heal from once I made that reality possible and real and then realizing that it wasn't everything that I thought it would be.

Michael: Yeah, never is it? And we when you grew up, like we grew up now, obviously very different backgrounds, but I assume a lot of the same interactions with people, right? Think small, sit in the back, don't make any noise, be humble, don't shine. And I experienced a tremendous amount of bullying being light skinned, biracial, and I'm sure you probably because of your skin tone and your hair followed suit in that and or whatever reasons if you can care to get into. But I remember distinctly being a kid, I remember there was God, what was that little boy band name? I was like the slew of little white boys. One of them played drum Hanson, so these kids were like in a band of a family band when they were in the nineties. They had that song, right? Everybody remembers that it was like probably one of the arguably biggest one hit wonders in the history of ever. And I remember one time I was telling these kids, I was like, I'm going to be a rock star one day. And pedro, it's like the one thing I've ever, only ever wanted to do. It's I'm going to be a rock star, and these kids be like, you're not going to be shit, you suck. Whatever, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, watch one day. Fast forward where I'm at now, decades later, I don't play an instrument, but I definitely stand in front of 10,000 people singing at the top of my lungs. My voice tenor is very different than something that'd be melodic, but it also is like my words and my energy and my poetry coming out in front of these humans. And there's something powerful about resiliency and being able to go through that and just believing in yourself anyway. Dude, what's so crazy is, man, cause I coach men, I coach women, I've coached thousands of people around the world over the course of almost a decade, and it's devastating how so many, we'll focus on men obviously, cause it's the context of this podcast, don't believe in themselves, just don't think it's for them. Like they can't have the body, the money, the girl, whatever, or they get one and they lose the other. They'll have wealth, but their relationships and their health is terrible, right? And vice versa, what I experienced, because I got so focused on money, is it destroyed every other element of my life. Because I wanted to be a millionaire too, so by the time I was 25, I made a million bucks. And I was 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep. There was a price, right? Having direction with no purpose, what happened to you? So you go, you chase the money, there's always a price to pay. I just know this to be true. Knowing success, knowing men of character, knowing that when I sit across a man like you, I know there is a price that you've paid to be who you are today. There's no way around it. What did you have to pay?

Pedro: Work was my life at the time, I feel like I hadn't built the character yet to do it in a better way. And so work was my life, I don't think I had many friends. At the time I was making good money and I was obsessed was the reality, like literally from the morning time I opened my eyes to the moment I went to bed, like work was my life and or personal development working on myself in some way, shape or form was my life to put this in perspective. So I'm a college dropout, I went to school for literally a week and then I walked out on a English. Class, which was boring as hell, and I was like, this is not for me. This is not gonna get me to whatever story I was telling about myself at the time, and I walked out of this class, and so the way I educated myself was that I came back home, I had one credit card at the time, I wasn't making any money, but it was a 705 limit on that credit card. And for whatever reason, for reasons I can't explain I decided to go on Amazon and literally max out my entire credit card for books. And I bought basically a bunch of personal development. Highly rated personal development.

Michael: Not cocaine or strippers.

Pedro: No, books. I kid you not. Like personal development books, influence books, business books. And my mindset was that if there's a human being who's lived life and Mastered this particular skill and or has wisdom from walking in life and now they're putting it in a book that I can literally buy for under 20$ like I was gonna take him up on that offer all day every day and Which court here's the craziest part about this like the craziest part about this is that before that moment I didn't read books. For whatever reason I just decided I'm gonna read books now. So I went from somebody who doesn't read books at all. This is, this tells you a lot about my personality. I went from somebody who doesn't read books to literally maxing out my credit card for books, and what I would do is I would wake up in the morning. I would open the book, stoked, that I had this book in front of me. Broke as shit, but like stoked that I was reading this book. My mom was waking up early to go to work. I was getting up before her, reading these books, stoked out my mind. And then she would come back from work, 6, 7pm, to cook for us. I was still reading, and after a few days of this, she'll literally come up to me and say your eyes are gonna fall off. Now keep in mind, this is the person who was trying to get me to read, the whole time, growing up, of course. And now she was telling me to fucking chill the irony in that is insane. But yeah, I was just obsessed. I was insanely obsessed.

Michael: That's, but that's what it takes, right? If you're stuck, do something different. I look at anyone who's had a major transformative experience. It required a radical shift. That took tremendous action and an investment in themselves, and I tell people all the time. I'm like, if you can't afford a coaching program, if you can't afford to go to the library, if you can't afford to watch YouTube, because there's a payment for everything, time, effort, energy, money, somehow you're paying for everything that you ever do ever. There is an exchange and some people are just too poor, because they don't recognize the investment opportunity. And I have this theory. You might actually be a person who could back this up other than myself, I have this theory that for every 100 you invest in yourself, you'll make 1000. I really truly believe that because I look at when I was at rock bottom, right? So I'm 26 and I My girlfriend and I were in the process of breaking up, she found out I had about 17 other girlfriends. It was not good. It's funny now, but it wasn't funny then. My little brother was like, dude, don't talk to me. Go fuck off. You're not my brother. I was 50,000 in debt cause I had failed tremendously at managing my money. And I was sitting in front of a business that was failing and because I was an entrepreneur, you know how it is, like you got to go find a way to make it happen. And one day this ad pops up for a Brendan Burchard course and I'm like, this is literally the first thing I said, I go, what is this white guy going to teach me? That's real, it is real. And if Brendan, he's like the whitest white guy. He just is, he's amazing, I met him. He's phenomenal, he's my first mentor, he just is, and I bought his course. It was like some intro to whatever the other things that he does is. It was 50 bucks. Dude, I was so broke. I was 50 grand in debt. There was no money, I had nothing, and I was like fuck it. What's another 50 bucks, and that's the equivalent in my head to what you did with 750.

Pedro: Yeah. The story doesn't stop there. Yeah, I want to also say that I had the safety of living with my mother, at the time I was like 18 years old. So I would say that helped. So that allowed me to take a lot bigger risk. I will say I haven't lost my appetite for risk. If not, if anything, I take bigger risks now, but just to put this in context before I had money. My dad, he would give me money to make sure that I was eating every single day. I was super grateful for that. But what I did was I would just eat at home, and I would just save that money. And every time that I saved up 20 bucks, you can make a story, a case to say that I could have gone to the library and all these things. I was really into running at the time. And I kid you not, the closest bookstore to where I live, this tells you the zip code that I lived in was seven miles away. And so I ran, did you not, seven miles to the bookstore and I would buy a paperback because that's all I can afford. I can't afford the hardcover, but I wanted to own the book I wanted to be in proximity in my space. I felt that for some reason it was gonna rub off on me. And I would buy this 16 book and I would literally Run back home. The way I spent my Saturdays was literally At the bookstore the entire day and then I would take the train back home and do that when I was by time I was 19. I joined my first mastermind which cost me 20 grand It's like I saved every penny I had to do that It cost me two grand a month Fast forward today. I've literally invested over a million dollars in myself. Yeah and it's interesting you have that equation from 1 million to every what is…

Michael: Every 100 equals a thousand.

Pedro: Okay, so it's interesting right because I've helped generate now literally over 100 million dollars in revenue for the projects that I've been involved in it's a hundred times multiple, no?

Michael: Yeah. That's what I think it is, truly. And like you growing up you couldn't pay me to read a book as a kid unless it was a book that I wanted to read. So I will say this. I've always been studious in reading. I was a kid who would skip school and go to the library, there was a library class. That I got an elective in high school and I would go to the library, which is weird, ‘cause on this one hand I'm playing for sports, right? I'm selling drugs on the side, but I'm reading all these books. I'm reading biographies. I'm learning about people who changed the world, and I'm just, you know what it was. I remember just being like, the world is so dark. My world is so dark, nothing getting evicted. No water, stilling food, government, food stamps, grandma's on a cone. Like it was fucking just the craziest stuff, but dude, I could go read these books and I could read about rock stars and politicians and presidents and world leaders and pilots and astronauts and the people who did just the most incredible things in the world. And it was just like, I can do incredible things, and it was just that being pointed so clearly into just, I was brainwashing myself and it'd be around these kids who would be like, dude, you're weird. Like, how are you playing these sports? But you walk around reading these books all day. And I'm like, ‘cause there's something in the secrets inside of here. When you came to the studio tonight, the first thing you pointed was a little bit of library. I have here a small portion of the thousands of books on my phone, most of which I've consumed and I'm with you. It's if you can create that space, if you can educate yourself, all the gold's in there, but the hard part is it's the belief. And this is my opinion, right? Because you look at me now, I'm not 350 pounds. I don't smoke two packs a day. I'm not 50 grand in debt, I don't have a girlfriend, but if I did, I definitely wouldn't be cheating on her, right? All of these things that have shifted in me, it came from the action. It came from the doing. Most people, they hear 2,000 a month mastermind. They go, you're out of your fucking mind. So why did you do it? Why do all of that? Why do any of this? Because as a guy and you're a handsome dude, you can go around, you could probably just hang out, bang chicks all day. Work some corporate job, whatever, right? Let's call it what it is. I don't ever want to sugarcoat anything. Why do you have an obsession to be better? What's the point?

Pedro: I think it's just always something I've had in me. I wish I can say that I did something. There are events and lessons that I've learned along my journey which have unlocked insane amount of drive and motivation inside of me, but not because of something outside of myself, but I think always since I was really young, I was different. My mom would always say, be more like your sisters, basically don't be yourself because you drive me nuts. I was different, I was the person who was always daydreaming and doodling and had a lot of energy and people didn't, my parents didn't know what to do with me, I needed. I needed particular ways to be stimulated that they couldn't necessarily provide or didn't understand. Which is why, like, when I see kids like this nowadays that I meet, I'm like, that kid's gonna be special. You just wait and see, because that was me. And all these kids want, and all I wanted, was quality time, and to be understood. Understood in who I was, not who people wanted me to be. Like, my mom would tell me to wash the dishes growing up, I hated washing the dishes. And I kid you not, even as a little boy, I'm not necessarily proud of this. But I would always say, I'm going to hire somebody one day. And I literally don't wash my own dishes. Again, I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but I would be proud of it. That was just always my belief. Everything that I didn't want to do, I always knew that my life could be different, I was just naive enough, stupid enough, crazy enough to live in that world. And I still continue to live in that world, and now, the belief that I have, I've discovered, is something even so much better, which is that a younger version of me always wanted to paint the perfect picture of what life should be. Here's how much money I'm supposed to be making, here's the person I'm supposed to be with, here's how all these different things need to be. The version of me now, which I love what I believe what I believe now is that my work to do is to get out of my own way and there's tools that I've learned and to do that, but to get out of my own way and create space for what life wants of me and what life wants of me, my experience has been that it's so much bigger than anything that my mind can fathom in all of the areas of my life. And I would say that's what shifted and changed in me and how I operate now versus this younger less developed version of myself that had less character.

Michael: Is there a connection for you to God, to the universe, spirit? Do you feel connected to a higher power that if you did fail, you'd be good. My mentor, one of them, and I've been mentored by some amazing men over the course of the last 13, 14 years. David Meltzer, he said something to me. We were having dinner one night and he was gracious enough to like invite me into his family and meet his kids and his wife. And it was just us. And you have to think this is a guy who charges multiple six figures for an hour of his time like that, and he's like a, he's like a surrogate father to me. He's an unbelievable human. He says to me, with what I do, coaching people have been through childhood trauma, supporting men on their journey, the stages, blah, blah, blah. He goes, you're being protected and promoted, like no matter what you ever do, you will never fail. And you cannot forget that. You're always being protected and promoted and until that moment, like honestly, and having that conversation with him and I'd never believed it. So I've success for me has always been like white knuckling no, I'm gotta hold onto this man. And I felt I've closed businesses, I've lost millions of dollars, like I've definitely played the entrepreneur game. And in that moment, it gave me some freedom, like this really powerful thing of being like, yeah, you know what, man, I'm not in debt, I'm not in jail, I'm not dead, I am not in debt. I live a pretty great lifestyle, I have amazing friends, I'm in good health, I must be protected and promoted. And so for you, what I'm curious about is what's your connection? Do you feel connected to source, whatever you may call it? And does that support you in your ability to take these big risks as a man?

Pedro: Yeah. So I've also lost a lot similar to your story, but it's interesting because, so I start with that story of me at five years old and looking at my dad and I'd say, I'm going to be a millionaire. And so what happened was that, I was in a place in my life where I convinced myself that the reason I wasn't happier was because I wasn't more successful. So I was like, I'm going to go and make this thing real, and I started doing these events teaching people certain wisdoms that I felt I had acquired up to that moment in my life. And each of these events I would do have 200 to 250 people in different cities that I would do it in, and my dad lives in New York or he lived in New York, I should say. And so he gets invited to this event. And at the end of the event, and you'll see where we're going with this I have everybody standing in a circle around this hotel ballroom with beautiful chandeliers. And I'm asking them to basically share, their top takeaways from the event, and beautiful things are being shared, and my dad's witnessing all of this. And at one point I look over to the entrance of the ballroom where I knew he was standing, and I see tears coming down his face, and what was so significant about that moment was that I had never seen that man ever in my life shed a tear and it was also the manifestation of that moment when I was five years old of making the money, but there was actually a bigger driver, which was making my dad proud, which is why my whole life. My dad was my hero. Now, what's really interesting about that was that I decide let me just say this. After that, I felt like I did it, like I did the thing that I set out to do and I felt high and ecstatic and incredible in that moment and I remember going to bed the next day and waking up and the first thought that crossed my mind was, now what? And that was the single most confusing thought I've ever had in my entire life. Because this was the thing that was supposed to make me happy, but it actually did the opposite. It took me down a spiral of feeling lost. And, after a few days of this without answers in sight for me and not really having role models to turn to, I just decided to shut it down, I just shut the business down, and what I decided to do was actually fly to Koh Phangan in Thailand. And there I was given the greatest gift of my life. So one day I'm just sitting at a cafe. And while I'm sitting at this cafe, it's raining outside, it's rainy season, and the whole entire cafe is full. But there's two seats available right in front of me, and this couple walks in. And the guy specifically says, Hey, can we sit here? The rest of the cafe is full. And I'm like, sure, and the next thing out of his mouth is It looks like you're working on something important. And I was like, yeah. And then so we started having a chat. I tell him a little bit about myself and my background. And I get really curious about him. And I say what do you do? And I'll never forget his response. And I think you'll resonate with this. He said, I help people who are ready to wake up. And this was so far out of anything I've ever been exposed to in my life that I was like, what do you mean? What does that even mean? And he, I will never forget his next response. It was, it's like the next level from where you're at now. Now my achiever, my high achiever said, tell me more. What do you mean it's the next level? I'm supposed to be, be doing the thing which is the next level. And so there's something more? And so it really piqued my interest, and I would never forget how he ended the conversation, which was like, Hey, if you ever need anything, just reach out. And at the time I was in a toxic relationship which showed me all of my fears and I think so much of what made me successful was like, controlling circumstances, life situations, and in this relationship, I couldn't do any of that. And on top of that, I was wrestling with my identity of who am I without the status and without the finance, the financial side of things that my business provided me, and what am I going to do next? And the combination of those two to three things, literally, I'm in the most beautiful beach. You've walked there before I'm in the middle of one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and remember just feeling insanely lost. And to come back to your question you first got to understand that this guy, Chris, his name was Chris feeling like I want to take my own life in this freaking insanely beautiful place. That was the moment where I knew I needed to reach out to somebody, and I had to remember what Chris had shared with me. He said, if you ever need help, just reach out and you support something like that. So I literally reached out and what Chris did for me was he taught me little by little how everything that was causing me pain and that I wanted to change because always the solution was outside of me, of course. He showed me how it was all it was all my own crap, which was a really fucking hard pill to swallow, which I fought him on again and again and again, and he helped me drop into what I was feeling and little by little over time start to unpeel these things and let go of these things, and as I started to let go of these things. Heal and arrive at a place where I didn't need to control any situations where I didn't need the financial status that I didn't need the status from my peers to feel full within myself. And so then what I learned from there was that as I started to move into this way of being, as I started to move into this way of being little by little life started hinting at something better and what it was inviting me into how to live my life. Which was to trust when life gets hard to let go, to surrender what is knowing that there's wisdom there for me. And as I started doing this, what I found was that as I started doing this, what I found was that how taken care of I was, that life never let me down, life never not took care of me. And the more I did it, the more that trust really started to build, and as that trust started to build, life really started to change and became different.

Michael: It's beautiful, and Copenhagen is a magical place. And I actually resonate with that so much because in this would have been 7 years ago. Dude, 7 years ago. Were we there at the same time?

Pedro: I think so, sounds like it.

Michael: We're going to have to find out, I sold everything that I owned, I really just started making money coaching, writing. I bought a one way ticket to Chiang Mai. I just always wanted to go to Chiang Mai. It was beautiful and it was fun. I ended up going to Phuket. Just within 24 hours, I left, I was like, this is not where I'm supposed to be, and someone was like, go to Copenhagen. And I was like, okay. So I pop over to Kosovo first, ‘cause obviously that's where the airport is, and I take the ferry across to Copenhagen. I don't bring a passport with me, I wasn't even thinking, it was like in the hotel in Koh Samui. I couldn't get a motorbike, I couldn't do it. I'm walking the island of Copenhagen in the middle of, I guess this would have been what October and it's scorching hot during the day and it's monsoon at night and you can see the storm coming in like over the ocean and I was like, holy shit, I have got to find a place, to go hunker down, I have no food, I have nothing with me, I'm like, ‘cause I was like, Oh, it's a day trip, I'll go check out Copacabana, I'll come back to Cosimo and find a hotel, some amazing guy. Let me hop on the back of the bike, took me to this hotel, storm comes in. It's like a massive storm, unbelievable. It's like it was one of those storms, I was like, this island might not be here storms and it clears about 10 o'clock. I've not eaten all day and I know that there's one restaurant up the road and I'm hoping that it's open and I walk to the restaurants probably I don't know, half a mile or so and no one's in there. And suddenly this woman from Amsterdam walks up and sits a couple of feet away from me. And we just have the most incredible conversation I've ever had. And it was about this, letting go. Entrusting and allowing and like it is cemented in my head and she may listen to this. I won't call her out, but she changed my life in that moment, fast forward a little bit. I decided to stay in Copenhagen for a few months. And even though I was there, I never did a full moon party by the way, I was just like, I don't want to. I was like, I don't want to like party. I'm not here to party, I'm here to do this other thing. So I'm like sitting on the beach and I'm writing this first book and hanging out with people and met some great folks. And one night I got to go back, it's I'm going to go to the next place. I'm heading to Vietnam and I'm on the ferry heading back and the sun, you know how the sun sets in Thailand where it's just this dark rose colored pink and orange and it's like you've never seen anything. It's the northern lights of sunset and I'm on the ferry and no one's on the top deck with me. I've never seen it empty before, it was the strangest situation I've ever been in. And this song called, take my hand from explosions and the sky is playing. I'm listening to my headphones and dude, I just start bawling. Just tears running down, but they were joy wasn't pain. It wasn't hurt, it was lost, it wasn't lost. It was the first time that I ever in my whole life, ever seven, eight years ago. The first time in my entire life, I felt peace. Because of everything that you just said, it was like, can you let go? Can you not hold on the money? Doesn't make you a man, the car certainly doesn't but your integrity does your character does a look at this as a transformational experience of my life that took me from this guy who was always trying to be the best at everything so he could have admiration and love and support and compassion and all those things that we seek and to just allowing and it changed everything when you look at your life now, and you had that experience with Chris and you got to that place and you're randomly at the cafe, right? And today, looking at the man you are, what are the shifts that happened then? That have been most profound for you. Is it in the way that you navigate relationships, friendships, business, your own personal talk mindset? What are the core tenants of who it is that you are today?

Pedro: First thing is I built a deep trust in life on the other side of all this healing. I knew that if I can make it through life for me has been a series of moments of making it through really tough shit or things that felt like the end of the world to me at the moment. Getting on to the other side of that, seeing that I made it through, and through those experiences, instead of just having those experiences, actually it, helping mold my trust in life. So I would say like that's one of the things that I have, but I have that to an unreasonable level.

Michael: What does that mean?

Pedro: It means that, I can literally be in the ocean drowning and I know I'm going to make it out like the most difficult situations you can possibly imagine, being in that and knowing that there's always a way through and because I believe that there's always a way through. I always make it through even about the things that might create anxiety for me or where I'm being invited into. Go through something that I've never gone through that's really stretching me. Because I have that trust, I respond to life differently. I would say that's one of one of the really big things for me. And also, as a result of that, I discovered the word that now runs my identity and runs my life. And for me that's the word is generosity, and what I always tell myself and now what I'm really encouraging others to really step into because I've seen the gifts of how this manifested in my life is to be generous. I believe because of my unique life experience, you have to live your life to come to this truth for yourself, whether you ever come to that truth. But for me, what I believe about generosity is that generosity is like one of those words that when you're ready for it in your life. Like I was at a particular time in my life, like it lands viscerally it's almost like God herself, himself is coming to you and saying, Hey, do you want to be all you can be with all you've been given? Here's how you do that, be generous in your life. Be generous in your relationships, right? Just ask yourself a question. Are you being generous inside of your relationship? Are you being generous inside of your business? Are you being generous inside of your customers? Are you being generous with yourself as a man? What does it actually look like to be generous with yourself as a man for me? I can answer that question selfishly You got to be able to answer it for yourself, but for me what that looks like is when life gets hard to open up to that wider like more hey, this is happening for me I can open up more little by little creating my capacity to be with what is and to move through that gracefully and to move through that, you know there's shit that I experience in my life now, whether that's in a relationship, in my relationship or whether in business that would have crushed me years ago. And now I'm chilling, right? But you build that capacity. You build that capacity by choosing to be generous with emotions, by choosing to be generous with your healing, by choosing to be generous in your business and how you spend your money and how you give your time to others and how you serve others. For me, generosity, on the other side of generosity is everything that I've ever wanted in my life and what that is still being revealing itself to me But I know like as long as I keep showing up in that way It will reveal itself to me in all the ways that I'm meant to be of service in this world.

Michael: That's powerful and you think about that as I think about you saying that I immediately just rewound to a relationship that I had that if I would have been more generous and not so focused on the business, that probably is the mother of my children.

Pedro: Dude, that's a big one, man. That's a big one. It's like something that I'm exploring right now for the first time and like meeting somebody who can be that and to really go there, requires vulnerability. That's an example of generosity right there. To be generous as a man, means to be generous with your vulnerability. If you want to know what scares the shit out of me today, is leaning into that. Yeah. But I don't want to be that guy who looks back and wishes to do things differently standards. Standards are so big in life, like you get what you tolerate. If you don't have the love you want, then are you showing up in love?

Michael: Yeah. No, it's spot on. And I think for a lot of men, and I obviously include myself in this, that journey to love is incredibly difficult. Like when I think about the four core pillars of Unbroken Men, it's courage, love, strength and honor. And I see I know automatically from a Ford, obviously we'll touch this from a business perspective, but from a forward facing marketing perspective, the word love and the word man, and the same fucking sentence is a death sentence. However, I know one thing to be true, the men that understand the power of love. For themselves, for others, for the world, for their partner, their family, their children, those are the guys who are gonna win, ‘cause I'm telling you dude, when I was shut down, when I was a robot, when I was a recluse, when I was terrified of intimacy, and I was chasing the bag, bro, my life sucked. And when I opened up and I shared intimately with my brothers and I cried and I talked to my sister and I healed the death of my mother from drugs and never meeting my father and losing my three best friends who got murdered and all of those things and then stepping into deeply hard moments and intimate relationships with women, opening myself up to love. For them, even in the moments where I'm like, I just want to get in the fucking car, never talk to you again, ‘cause it's easier to walk away. This as well as I do, it's easier to walk away, but to sit in it and to do it with patience and grace, like that's where you win, that's the game.

Pedro: Yeah, it's not only where you win, man, but that's where you build character.

Michael: A hundred percent.

Pedro: I think every man who has any sense of emotional intelligence and awareness. It's wise enough to acknowledge that women are gifts for sure in the lessons that they give us.

Michael: They're gonna carry lessons.

Pedro: In the character that we get to build by being in love I don't know if you're familiar with Tantra of people inside of your community are familiar with Tantra, but what I really Resonate with in terms of the tantric path is that in yoga you can be the person who like pushes away life And say, I'm just gonna sit in a cave, I'm gonna meditate, and I'm, this is how I'm gonna reach enlightenment. But Tantra is one of those things that you deliberately choose to make money build businesses, have a family choose a partner. And you know it's gonna be fucking chaos. And that it's gonna fucking challenge you and stretch you, but you do it anyways, and that's a choice. And what Tantra says is, how do we make money? How do we make that the fucking sweetest, most beautiful piece of art that you've ever seen? And make magic out of that, and make music out of that. That requires generosity. That's why it resonates with me.

Michael: Yeah. No, that's beautiful. That's a great way to look at it. And it's not just sex, right? ‘Cause people hear Tantra and they go to sex.

Pedro: Dude, that's 5 percent of it is that, which is beautiful, by the way.

Michael: Yeah, for sure. And I think what's interesting is a lot of the books that I have read about Tantra, they all literally, like the first paragraph is like, This isn't about sex.

Pedro: Literally. But somehow it's just whoops everyone thinks it is.

Michael: I know that's poor marketing, right? You look at it and I think you're spot on, man. And I encourage guys to be willing to step into that level of vulnerability and it is generosity because you're giving yourself. I want to go back to something because I think it's really important and I don't want to overshadow it. I've had my own battles with mental health. I've shared publicly about multiple suicides attempts when I was young, I've shared publicly about my own struggles with depression and addiction and different things throughout this healing journey. And I've shared publicly about the only reason why I'm here right now, and that was my willingness to ask for help. You talked about being on that island and feeling man, I'm in this beautiful place, but I want to take my life. Why did you ask for help? And what would you tell guys who are in that position?

Pedro: So what's interesting enough is I think that was the first time that I willingly asked for help. I'm not saying that there weren't other moments that people showed up for me, but it was the first time that I reached out to somebody and said, I want your help, and I wasn't in a good place. I wish I had a great answer for that, other than, I didn't think it was going to end well for me if I didn't. And I really felt like I was in a place in my life where my back was against the wall and I really didn't know how to move through it. I felt lost. Like you, you expressed this beautiful sunset that you painted a little bit ago. And yeah, that was my reality, which is most people's dreams, and I was still feeling this way. And something that this man said was enough for me. To have enough curiosity about it, to want to know where that was going to go, and I think life is really just a series of moments of that. Something happens, and you build a little bit of curiosity about it, and you have the courage to lean into that, and say yes to that, and then it ends up turning into this thing that you look back on and it's the greatest fucking gift. And I feel this is what this was for me. I didn't know that this was going to turn out like this. Here's the part you don't know. So I probably spent, I kid you not a few hundred hours with Chris after this initial meeting. And here's the wildest part, which I can't believe to this day, which probably has a lot to do with the kind of human I am and why I like to show up for people in my life in this way. Chris never asked me for a single dollar. Let me just say this, make sure everyone gets this. I spent hundreds of hours with him. He never asked me for a single dollar. His commitment to collapse my ego was unlike anything that I've ever experienced in my life. So he was adding all this value to my life and I was like, Hey, how can I help you? He was talking about him and his girlfriend. They were writing a book and I was like, Oh my gosh, I got to connect you to this person. And he would immediately, not because he didn't want those things. But because he knew that was my pattern, of trying to be significant, he saw right through it. And he would just poke at that shit, and just have none of it. And he just shut it all down. Literally just shut it all down, and I would just be like, woah. Like what is this?

Michael: What am I supposed to do? How will you acknowledge me?

Pedro: Yeah, exactly He saw this right here and he would like just on the spot He's like he would call out my dad and like all these different things and like I didn't know Chris was to be that person for me but like I'm so grateful and one of the biggest things that I can encourage people to do is keep an open mind Because you have no freaking clue what gifts life has in store for you through the people that you meet in your life and or things that you come across I had no clue that Chris would literally He was a guide. He guided me to the point where then I became my own guide. And honestly, I learned more from myself today than I do from anybody because I trust myself. Now I trust the lessons that are coming through me independent of any voice. I learned more from myself than anybody that I paid thousands of dollars from. If I have the courage to really receive the lessons and really listen to what life is saying. I, and I really feel to the capacity that I've been able to do this is what's been allowing me to be successful in other areas of life. And I think the greatest gift as a man, at least for me, is to look at yourself in the mirror, and fucking love what you see.

Michael: Truth. Yeah. And if you don't, here's the catch 22 here. Here's the secret that people don't know. And if you can't look in the mirror and love yourself, do it anyway. There's a, there's one of the things I remind myself of every day and it's, how do I appreciate myself as a man today? It's very simple, a very simple question. How can you just appreciate yourself? This shit's hard, bro. I don't know about you, man, but I didn't wake up and be like, today was gonna be an easy day. I had to deal with problems, I had to deal with issues, I had to deal with the person I was seeing being like, ah, I don't think it's working. I had to deal with, I had to let somebody go, I had to, file bankruptcy in that business, I got a car accident over here somebody died over there. Life is gonna life. It just is. There's no way around it. And it's the thing that I always try to come back to. And I sit in it with like grace for myself, dude, I'm fuck. I'm a nightmare. Most of the time, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm okay with acknowledging that I'm a difficult person. In my own right, I'm super rigid, I'm disciplined, I things need to be this way. Like you, like my dishes might sit there forever until the housekeeper comes.

Pedro: It's real, dude.

Michael: It's real. And like people are like, why can't you just do it? I'm like, 'cause I don't want to. They don't get it. They don't get it. I don't cook my own food. And that's a byproduct, and there's a whole another conversation to be had around that. But in my moments, even when I'm made a huge mistake, even when I fall back on my morals and I break my character because I have, and I will, and you will too, and we all do. And even though we raise our standards, there's always that moment where you're still a human. Yeah. And it's like in that moment, can you have grace for yourself? Can you still have appreciation? And I think the reason why people can't have success, Let me rephrase this. I think a reason that people don't have the amount of success that they're capable of having mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually, financially is very simple because they're holding themselves to measures that are absolutely unattainable because instead of looking in the mirror, they're looking out the window.

Pedro: I agree with that. Just the one thing that I would add to that is that it's a, what are you holding yourself to a higher standard to, for me in my life, it's I've defined one of the purposes of my life is to hold myself to the standard that when life gets hard, like going back to that word generosity, to be generous with the emotions that I feel, and it's powerful. So instead of like standard to this impossible perfection. The, instead of trying to make it about like the outcome, for me, it's more about like, how can I hold myself to a high standard to how I respond, which is very different because I know that this is the game is why I love life. If you really zoom out and you look at your life journey, it's pretty incredible. And the reason I love the game is because the game has been revealed itself has revealed itself to me, right? Again, everyone's game might be different, but to me, the game is. If I can be generous with my emotions and like how I respond to life everything else takes care of itself This is why I like worry outside of maybe some entrepreneurship Worries like, you know when your payroll gets higher and you have to manage higher payroll, which you've never had to do that's it. That's this is literally why I don't really stress because, that's it. All I can control is how I respond, and that's all I need to do. And what I found in my life is that to the proportion that I do that, everything takes care of itself, everything, everything, and life then just starts to reveal these incredible miracles. And starts to, all these things that I've been wanting to manifest all my life Life's not going to give you anything you're not ready for.

Michael: Yeah, and it's only ever going to give you what you ask for. And that's, what's so interesting. The universe doesn't know when you're complaining versus when you're asking. And so it just hands it to you. It just delivers it to you. Oh, I thought this is what you wanted, Pedro. You said this always happens to me. We're just going to keep giving it to you, okay.

Pedro: But here's the, one of the big key sets is. Again, these are the layers. So once you get what you want, I learned this from one of my mentors.

Once you get what you want, you start to realize that what you want is actually quite limited, because there's always more, Sage. There's always more, and there's no way that your human consciousness can know that. It can't like predict the future to like, exactly how that's meant to unfold. I don't believe so. But as I've gained more success in my life, what I've learned to do is let go of, like, how I feel all that is meant to unfold directionally, okay this is what I want. But then I let go of it and know what I'm working towards. And then I let go of it, always creating space for something better, and life always has something better in store, always.

Michael: It does. Even in the most difficult times it does, because if you're still alive, there's still opportunity, and I live by that fully and people really in my life and it has been an odd thing to reconcile. People think I'm crazy, right? That's part of the entrepreneurial curse, you probably get that too, but I'm not. And there's a Kanye West lyric, I know he's polarizing, I know he's polarizing, but it's, the first time I heard it, it just is cemented in my brain, I like played it back dozens of times. Dozens of times and it's I'm a star. How can I not shine? It's like you're here to shine. You're here to be great. You're here to Elevate your community your family your children your lineage I don't know what that means for every individual person, but for me, it's okay, I live a moderately simple lifestyle in comparison to what I am capable of having. I could have a hundred thousand dollar car in the driveway. I could live in a giant house right now. I have no interest in it, it's really fascinating. I have a lot of gratitude in consideration that I used to have to still food. And you talk about generosity when in this moment, what I feel is like just a huge amount of if I took all my gratitude and I can be more generous with it, man, that's what it's about. That's really what it is, and you look at where your life is today and your life might not be what you wanted it to be, but it's what it's supposed to be.

Pedro: No, I didn't have any of this stuff in store.

Michael: Oh no, dude. I was like, I didn't think I was going to make it to 30. I didn't think I was gonna make it to 25. A lot of my people didn't. Yeah, bro. This is bonus time. Oh yeah. And so I'm like if it doesn't work, cool. If I'm in 50 grand of debt again, all right, I figured it out once get my heart broken again Okay, figure it out once you can do it again. You can elevate you can keep going And I think that's always the cornerstone of this. It's like courage, love, strength, and honor like that courage part is about keep going that stands out to me, man. Why does it stand out to you courage?

Pedro: I don't know. I feel like you've just summarized my whole life right there. It's a one word or at least what's led to the byproduct of what in front of you today. Like choosing to, to be courageous in moments that, they look pretty dark. And to believe in something better and believe that I was maybe to get through it, to believe that. Yeah, I was going to get the lessons that I wanted to get to, I feel like sometimes when you're, at least for me, like when I didn't, I wasn't where I wanted to be in life. Like I suffered a lot from being impatient and when life is not meeting my expectations, at least a younger version of myself, there lied all my suffering when life wasn't meeting my expectations, their line, all my suffering. And yeah, and those moments, at least when it felt that way, like having the courage to continue to show up and get up every single day, despite feeling the way that I felt one of the, one of the most humbling moments in my life, the, I told you about when I dropped out of university that I bought all these books but before going to university, like there was a gap between high school and university. And that was also a really dark time for me. Where I remember my dad walking in, I was just watching some TV shows on the TV, just laying on the couch and my dad walks in. He said something, I just broke down in tears, I was never a crier, and that's probably a bigger thing to unpack if we want to go there. But that has a lot to do with my trauma and like the fact that was happening but all these things in life, they happen for a reason. I look back at my life and all these things and like they're incredible gifts, and I really encourage everybody to trust those gifts, of life not going your way. There's something that you're meant to learn that you haven't learned yet, and that's why life is unfolding the way it's unfolding.

Michael: Yeah. And it's okay to not be a millionaire and it's…

Pedro: Yeah. That's not for everybody.

Michael: Dude, and it's okay to not have a mansion. And it's okay to have a loving, healthy relationship, let's call. I'm just going to be true here with a woman who isn't a supermodel.

Pedro: One of my favorite songs, you like rap, I love rap. So Jayco is one of my favorite artists and he has a song called Love Yours.

Michael: Yep. A hundred percent.

Pedro: And I love the message of that song. Because I'm here, I'm literally telling you that I had all the things that you think you're supposed to have. And I was not happy. And I would trade everything, literally, for the level of joy and fulfillment that I experience in my life. I lit I would. I would not trade any money for the joy and fulfillment that I have in my life. And, yeah, you might be able to listen and say oh, that's easy for you to say know that I didn't have anything, I had less than anything, and I feel that way.

Michael: Yeah, I feel the same. And when I look at All the plane rides being on Times Square billboards, bestselling book, award winning podcast, award winning speaker, all of these accolades, bro. You know what? I take over all of that a week ago when we had guys dinner, I invite this group of incredible men out to dinner, my favorite restaurant, I'll take that over all of it, because that shit like dude, I wish if I could go back in time. I wouldn't be who I was because I, obviously we, we can have that conversation, it's pointless. But if I could teach people anything, it's that it, there, the success will never bring you fulfillment ever. And look here, Pedro, this is true, man. Nobody's going to hear this until they experience it, you and I, we've heard it. It did not stop us, bro. When I was like six, I might've been younger. I might've been five. I remember distinctly my mother being like, don't touch the electrical socket. Every mother tells their kids, right? You know what I did? No, I'm whoa. I went way beyond that. I put a fork in it. I got a hundred percent shocked, not electrocuted, but I was on the ground and the world went black for a second.

Pedro: That's wild, dude.

Michael: It is wild. But that's me like a dude. I'm like, I'll jump off the building. You ready? And all of the things that I've ever garnered in this journey will never compare to two hours dinner with my closest friends will never compare to waking up next to the woman I love. It will never compare and never compare to hugging my brothers and saying, I'm sorry. And I wish men especially would stop, you need success to some capacity. Take care of your bills, take care of your family, you don't have to be an entrepreneur. I don't recommend this life for anyone. This is a hard road, bro. You know how cool it'd be to just go do the UPS, make one 20 a year, come home, put my Brown suit in the closet, hang out with my wife, watch TV all night. I entertain that sometimes, man. And it's but really what it's about is. Is this idea of fulfillment has the idea of being a man who is fulfilled has got to be removed from the idea that success is fulfillment.

Pedro: Yeah. I couldn't agree more with that. I couldn't agree more with that. Have the courage to live the life that's yours. Have the courage to live the life that's yours. So much of my early days was trying to be something that I wasn't. I'm grateful for that because I learned a lot of skills that I use to this day as a result of that, but when I started to experience that fulfillment was when I had the courage to say, I want my life to look like my life, which is fucking scary because you don't know what the fuck that is.

Michael: You sure don't.

Pedro: I'd rather my life looked like that person's life. That looks pretty good. It's predictable. Yeah. It's predictable. It's safe. That's an example of controlling life. And, but like when everything started to unfold in terms of finding the love I wanted, to becoming the man that I wanted, into having the body that I wanted, into having the energy that I wanted to have the finances that I wanted. None of that happened until I had the courage to live a life that was my own.

Michael: I think that's a mic drop moment, brother. Thank you for being here. I'm going to ask you a final question. But before I do that I know you're elusive, you're hard, you're a hard guy to find, but if people wanted to find you, is there a way that they could?

Pedro: Yeah. So yeah for a really long time, I stayed away from the socials and all that stuff. And grateful I did that for the time that I did. But now I'm in a place in my life where I'm, I want to share some of the things that, we're talking about specifically for me, it's related to business. You mentioned something earlier, just I want to circle back on, which was you said business and love. And I forget the exact word to use, but it's essentially something really negative associated to those two words coming together. And so much of what's led to any success that I've had is actually putting those two things together. And specifically what I'm really passionate about in my life now is not just people who want to grow businesses, but people who actually care. Care about the people they serve and are actually more motivated about the impact that they're having in the world knowing that the byproduct of that gets to be what gets to sit in their bank account and not the other way around. And so where I'll be sharing content like this is going to be in a new brand that I'm launching called business with integrity and that'll be at businesswithintegrity.com and just having conversations that matter. For people who feel called to that.

Michael: I love that it's necessary, it's so necessary. You know this as well as I do, that there are a tremendous number of people who are not living in integrity, charging people a lot of money for services that are not rendered. That's another conversation for another day. But I appreciate that and I hope that I can support that in any way, so always let me know. My last question for you, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Pedro: I wasn't expecting this one. I think it comes back to what we talked about here today, which is to be unbroken. I think is just having the courage to continue to get back up, which for me looks like this trust in life that I'm talking about. Like we all want to present that we have it all figured out and we know what we're doing in this spinning globe. But the reality is just like everybody who's listening, I'm figuring it out along the way as well. And right now, this is my experience of life, this is the level of wisdom that has come through me, this is what I'm working on. I don't know what's next, and the same thing that I need to heal is literally the same thing that I need to step into my life's purpose, which is that trust, which is that generosity which is to be generous. There's so much energy, from that place, which is independent of any outside rewards. And that's what gets me up every single day and what has me so fired up. When you trust life, what happens is that you start to get downloads that feel like they're coming from the highest source. However you define that. And I think you're smiling because you get it, right? Some people might get it, some people might not, but let me try and break down this concept, which is When you create space for that in your life and when it's ready to come into your life and it comes to you, the way that I experience truth in my life is not through mental thoughts, but I feel it in my body. And when I feel it in my body, I don't need words, it doesn't come with words. I just know, I just know. When I know, I receive it as shit, a fucking creator just whispered some shit in my ear. And when I get that download and have the courage to live into that's my motivation. And that doesn't require anything outside of myself. I think a lot gets to happen. From that place, and feeling just, it just, it feels really expansive. So yeah, trusting life that's what it looks like. I think everything lives on the other side of leaning in and being generous and trusting life a lot's possible from there.

Michael: Beautifully said, my friend, Pedro Jerez. Thank you.

Pedro: Appreciate you, brother.

Michael: Oh, man. Phenomenal, man.